The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories eBook

death if it got there! Why will you humbug yourselves
with that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except
a spoken one? What is the difference between
lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth?
There is none; and if you would reflect a moment
you would see that it is so. There isn’t
a human being that doesn’t tell a gross of lies
every day of his life; and you—­why, between
you, you tell thirty thousand; yet you flare up here
in a lurid hypocritical horror because I tell that
child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from
her imagination, which would get to work and warm up
her blood to a fever in an hour, if I were disloyal
enough to my duty to let it. Which I should probably
do if I were interested in saving my soul by such
disreputable means.

“Come, let us reason together. Let us
examine details. When you two were in the sick-room
raising that riot, what would you have done if you
had known I was coming?”

“Well, what?”

“You would have slipped out and carried Helen
with you—­wouldn’t you?”

The ladies were silent.

“What would be your object and intention?”

“Well, what?”

“To keep me from finding out your guilt; to
beguile me to infer that Margaret’s excitement
proceeded from some cause not known to you. In
a word, to tell me a lie—­a silent lie.
Moreover, a possibly harmful one.”

The twins colored, but did not speak.

“You not only tell myriads of silent lies, but
you tell lies with your mouths—­you two.”

“That is not so!”

“It is so. But only harmless ones.
You never dream of uttering a harmful one.
Do you know that that is a concession—­and
a confession?”

“How do you mean?”

“It is an unconscious concession that harmless
lies are not criminal; it is a confession that you
constantly make that discrimination. For
instance, you declined old Mrs. Foster’s invitation
last week to meet those odious Higbies at supper—­in
a polite note in which you expressed regret and said
you were very sorry you could not go. It was
a lie. It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever
uttered. Deny it, Hester—­with another
lie.”

Hester replied with a toss of her head.

“That will not do. Answer. Was it
a lie, or wasn’t it?”

The color stole into the cheeks of both women, and
with a struggle and an effort they got out their confession:

“It was a lie.”

“Good—­the reform is beginning; there
is hope for you yet; you will not tell a lie to save
your dearest friend’s soul, but you will spew
out one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort
of telling an unpleasant truth.”

He rose. Hester, speaking for both, said; coldly:

“We have lied; we perceive it; it will occur
no more. To lie is a sin. We shall never
tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies
of courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang
or a sorrow decreed for him by God.”